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Specs

The handset is a Linux-based 5-megapixel Samsung device with Vodafone's proprietary operating system and 360 interface.

It is a pretty and attractive touch-screen device, encased in black plastic and has three dedicated physical buttons under the screen for calls, contacts and the apps menus.

Like the iPhone, you slide to unlock the screen and slide between different screens but unlike the iPhone both your timeline (recent calls, SMS messages, etc, from contacts) and contacts themselves are displayed in 3D.

In order to get your universal address book sorted properly, you must install the Vodafone People client on your PC, and from there you can easily arrange and sync your contacts, as demonstrated by Conor McGlynn of the Vodafone 360 team.

I was pretty impressed with the way all the Gmail, Facebook and phone contacts could be grouped, with all the duplicates weeded out.

As pointed out by fellow Vodafone 360 launch attendee and blogger John Keyes, this was down to Vodafone's acquisition of Zyb in 2008.

So the collective address book is a great concept and it was nice to see up-to-date friend statuses from Gmail and Facebook sitting under the contact details.

The other novelty of the 360 is that all of this can be viewed in 3D. When you bring up your contacts, it is a bit like the opening credits of Star Wars, with contacts from a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away hurtling towards you as you scroll, their faces coming into view along with contact details and online status.

In what order do these faces zoom towards you, I hear you ask? By default it is most contacted or most recently contacted but you can choose the order yourself, and there are four different groups you can label and populate from the PC client, eg, family, friends, work.

There is also a dedicated status button so you can see all your contacts listed by what they're up to right now.

As it happens, I quite like this 3-D lark, but you may want to see a more static solid representation of your contacts, one you can search through alphabetically - this is easy to switch between.

As for the apps part of the 360, all the usual suspects like YouTube, web browser, weather app, camera, and so on are there, and there is a neat functionality that allows you to pop out a "floating app" or do a mini zoom on some apps rather than launch them fully.

In other words, some of your apps can be switched into little preview widgets - handy for checking the weather without having to leave the homescreen.

All this was quite nice, of course, but I had one burning question - when is Twitter getting integration into the Vodafone People universal phone book?

Price: €99 with Vodafone €35 per month voice and data price plan

By Marie Boran